Diane Wehrle CEO at Rendle Intelligence and Insights joins Simon for their monthly chat about footfall trends and shopping behaviours. They cover:
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Diane Wehrle CEO at Rendle Intelligence and Insights joins Simon for their monthly chat about footfall trends and shopping behaviours. They cover:
#theproductivityexperts
Register for the Produtivity Forum 2024
Follow us on Twitter @Rethinkp
Connect to Simon on LinkedIn
Follow ReThink on LinkedIn
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. Our favourite guest, anne-will, returns for our monthly chat. Ceo and founder at Rendall Intelligence, hi Di.
Speaker 2:Hi, simon, that's very nice of you to say that.
Speaker 1:It's all right, you're welcome, it's true, so that's all your guests. No, I don't. You can listen to any single podcast. I think we've done over 200 now and I don't think I've said that to anybody. So there you go. You're honoured. You're honoured and and our most regular guests as well, with these monthly chats, so great to be back. Quite a bit's happened. That's relevant since our chat around December to January. So we're into January to Feb now, aren't we? So do you want to give us a kind of state of the nation?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I think we're starting to turn toward a better situation. Really, all the indicators are looking slightly more positive. Probably the most visible one is inflation, and I'm sure everyone's seen that. In February that came down to 3.4% from 4% in January, which is really encouraging. I have to say that most of that is driven by reductions in prices in housing and utilities, so electricity, gas and fuel and that's actually prices declining there, which is good for all of us. There is still inflation of 5% in fashion and in food and in hospitality of 6%. So you know we're still seeing prices rising. They're just not rising as quickly as they were, so that's a net caution.
Speaker 2:On the footfall side of things, we saw an annual decrease, according to MRI, of just over 2% across all destinations, 3.5% in high streets and, interestingly, sensomatic tracked footfall in interstores, and footfall interstores actually was worse than footfall in interstores and footfall in stores actually was worse than footfall in destinations, and that declined by 6.2 percent annually in February. So it's still um. You know it's still challenging out there, but um on the good. On the other plus side is consumer confidence measured by GFK. Um is now sitting at what their overall index score is sitting at, minus 21, which, unless you know GfK, it doesn't mean very much, but if we compare that to February 2023, when it was minus 38 it shows that people are feeling more confident, so things are on the move in the right direction now, which is encouraging Some green shoots of spring then.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we're not there yet, but are we ever there? And when we're there, do we know we're there?
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly so. It's all a journey, isn't it? Not a destination, um, and we kind of enter easter really at the time of recording where we're in the week of good friday. It feels really early. It's probably one of the earliest easters I've known. Um, weather's not supposed to be great, I think. Rain Friday, saturday looks ish, sunday looks ish, and then a bit of rain, still cold. We've seen a bit of sunshine, haven't we? But it's not. There's no sign of of any blue sky, particularly on the horizon. So typically, I mean, my background pre-boots was DIY, that that's our, was our Christmas. So bedding plants, compost gardening is when it takes off. Garden furniture, barbecues feels a bit early for that this year. Um, so any thoughts on where we're likely to see trends over easter?
Speaker 2:yeah, and it's really interesting around what's going to happen. East, I mean, I you know, having um worked in, you know, obviously as a founder, co-founder of springboard, and having looked at footfall over the years and the impact of an easter it's early easter, you're absolutely right, simon, when it's early it's more challenging because, look, it's yeah and I hate your weather. Weather because everyone talks about the weather, but you know it does tend to be colder and you know it's not quite that time to do a complete overhaul of your garden perhaps. I think this year we're in um a really interesting place around spending um, because actually the, the increases and and the better spending um areas have been in leisure and entertainment and self-care. So, um, so health and beauty, and that trend is going to follow. It's likely to well, I'm forecasting it's going to follow through to to easter um. We've um.
Speaker 2:I work as one of my, one of my new roles this is brand ambassador for beauclair, and beauclair collect sales data in towns and cities across the uk and what we've seen is that the sales in those categories of entertainment and hospitality really the enjoyment and experience categories have done better than we clearly know. Fashion's been challenged um, but you know, and also particularly household goods, which includes garden centers and large ticket items, has been challenged. So with the early easter and the ongoing challenges in those sectors, I'm predicting that the benefits of easter will really be for that experience, particularly if people aren't going to head off to coastal towns and historic towns to go and walk around in the pouring rain. They're going to want to go to the cinema or they want to go out to eat, and so those destinations are going to do better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think what history tells us is it tends to push that gardening stuff into the early May and the late May bank holidays, doesn't it? So spring bank, I think, is the end and the early May is clearly at the start. So if the weather's picked up, I think we just delay that and it moves, so all's not lost Again. Similar themes I think that we discussed over the Christmas period and the last podcast around that swing to health and beauty and experiential bits. So that remains consistent. And while you're on I know you've done a lot on Sky and other channels let's just touch on this mysterious piece of news around kind of Tesco, sainsbury's, gregg's, mcdonald's and these kind of IT glitches.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, of course you know, being on the outside and asked a comment, it's really quite interesting, I mean. I think the first thing I'll say is I'm not a great believer in coincidence.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, I'm in a world of. There's something strange going on, but can I prove it now?
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, exactly, and you know you might get one you might get. Well, I think two is too many, but you know one you could probably answer. But you know, once you get to four, all within the same sector, it's screaming. Something is going on. Whether it's a hack, whether it's, you know the Chinese, russians, who knows? But something is definitely getting challenging and disrupting retail and it was certainly a massive disruption for Sainsbury's and Tesco the previous weekend. I think the world nearly went into meltdown when Gregg's couldn't open their stores. It was almost akin to when Kentucky Fried Chicken couldn't get any chicken, but they seemed to solve that relatively quickly and opened up in the afternoon. So yeah, something is happening and we just don't really understand what that is right now.
Speaker 1:So I think it's one of those just to watch this space, isn't it, and see if anything else happens. Easter's clearly a prime time for trading, so fingers crossed everybody can get through it without a glitch. But yeah, it just struck me as really strange not one, not two, not three, but four people with very similar problems around processing stock or taking payment. Just yeah, too much of a coincidence.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and of course we forget I mean, I know when I use them, but I don't actually carry much cash anymore because you know you never had to. And I think this will encourage people and push people just to carry a little bit of cash around with them. After I actually did an interview for Sky News on the Sainsbury's issue on that Saturday and I was standing outside the Sainsbury's store where I live and then I thought, well, once I finish, I'll have a go to Sainsbury's and buy a few things, and they were only accepting bank payments from Lloyds and Barclays or cash. So they were very, very disrupted. And so, you know, I think it will encourage us all to just carry some cash with us. Perhaps we wouldn't have done and then we would have had that innate reliance on our phone payments and our cards.
Speaker 1:I think we will be, um, probably a little bit more cautious about that now yeah, it's probably a bit of a reminder of how easy it is to take the system down almost, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it is yeah, yeah. And, of course, they all have access to all of our personal data as well, which we forget because it seems so seamless. So, but are we not going to participate in the electronic payment world? Probably not.
Speaker 1:No, no, exactly. It reminded me of the podcast we did recently on open banking, which, is it kind of cuts out the middle bit of the the payment. So again, maybe that starts to to become more popular as people connect directly with the bank yes, yeah, I think that's probably true.
Speaker 2:Definitely you don't get the intermediaries and the third part is coming through exactly reduce the risk anyway.
Speaker 1:On that note, we'll pause there and we will catch up next month to see how we fared over easter I've looked forward to it perfect. Thanks, die speak soon.